


Encoded, Stored, Retrieved.

by gallantrejoinder



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Amnesia, Fix-It, Future Character Death, Future Fic, Gen, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 15:51:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1147822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallantrejoinder/pseuds/gallantrejoinder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donna almost remembers. And then she does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Encoded, Stored, Retrieved.

Martha, also known as The Woman Who Walked the Earth and defended its people, who had bewitched Shakespeare and saved lives on the moon, is working her way through the Christmas crowds with all the grace and elegance of a charging rhinoceros . . . _or a Judoon_ , she thinks, as she nearly bowls over a woman with at least seven shopping bags on her arms.

Martha has people to see, not least of all her mother, who was not pleased to know that Martha worked on Christmas Eve. But it couldn’t be helped, and Martha enjoyed her work, though she did feel guilty when her family called. She was used to being away from home. Far too used to it than she should be, after all, she’d been further away from home than possibly any human on Earth - though of course, the Doctor’s companions were scattered far and wide and it was entirely possible that she could bump into one of them again. Although, she reflected, apart from Mickey she never really saw any others. 

The old days were the old days. She’d learned to leave it at that, although it was always fun to realise that she knew where the Doctor had made his mark when others didn’t. Though, the thing with Elizabeth I still left her baffled . . . And her work brought her into contact with things she’d never seen before, not even with him. She had new friends; she had a purpose.

Currently, her purpose is to get somewhere she could put her feet up. Her whole body is aching with the weight of her Christmas shopping and she’s been walking for far too long in the freezing weather in her own opinion.

Finally, Martha enters the café she had been heading for, feeling a rush of warm air to combat the cold from outside. Sitting down at a free table, she contemplates what her life would have been like without the Doctor. _Boring as hell, though I wouldn’t have known that_. Seeing strange things and doing strange deeds is a part of her life now. Still, sometimes – like today, having to chase down a rabid monster on Christmas Eve and then finish all of her Christmas shopping to boot – sometimes, she wanted to forget.

~

Donna enters the café with an exhausted huff. Sighing with relief, she sits down at the nearest table and dumps her shopping bags at her feet. Buying presents was fun but carrying them home was certainly not. She orders a coffee and sits back, observing the people in the café restlessly. She wants to go home – _the look on Grandad’s face when he sees his brand spanking new telescope!_ – but she could murder a hot drink first. 

Her eyes slide over the various last-minute Christmas shoppers. Of course, she knew very well the sorts of Christmas shoppers one could expect - wasting your youth in retail gave you that sort of knowledge. You had your regulars, the lazy parents, the lonely people, the gaggles of schoolkids with time off, the frantic forgetters –   
forgetting –

Donna snaps herself back to reality. Her mind is always zoning these days, at the most random places and phrases – like when her grandad offered to show her the stars at night from his telescope, or the time that skinny comedian on the telly had donned that stupid pinstripe suit for a sketch. 

But she attributes her funny spells to her new husband, Shaun. _Must have love on the brain_ , her mother had teased her when Donna had first mentioned them. And it’s true. He’s everything she wants, and she’s happy with him – even her mother likes him. Donna smiles. Her mother’s approval normally would have been a deal-breaker – but for once, Donna doesn’t care about whether her mother approves or not. 

Her coffee arrives at last. She takes a sip, eyes still wandering around the little café. _Why is that woman staring at me?_

~

Martha stares at Donna in shock, her mind whirling. _Another one! Here! In this café!_ She keeps her eyes on Donna, hoping to catch her attention, because she’s still too shocked to move. _Oh, someone up there’s playing tricks on me!_

But Donna isn’t looking at her. Donna’s gaze is roaming the shop, as if she’s searching for something. She seems to zone out for a moment, before focusing in on herself and smiling. But just when Martha thinks she should get up and bloody well talk to the woman, Donna catches her eye. 

Excited, Martha finally smiles and waves, nearly jumping out of her chair. Donna looks behind her, obviously confused. _Perhaps she doesn’t remember me,_ Martha thinks _although I highly doubt it!_ She abandons her coffee and nearly runs towards a reminder of the old days.

~

_My god, she’s getting up!_ Donna thinks, panicking as she racks her brains to remember the woman. _Allie, from the Christmas party last year? No she’s taller . . . Funny. That was two years ago. What happened last Christmas?_ She can’t remember. But a woman she has never met before in her life, though with a very familiar face, is walking towards her with a look of extreme happiness and Donna is beginning to feel very alarmed.

The woman sits down across from her and grins. “My God, Donna! Don’t you remember me?”

“Um . . . No, sorry.” Donna mutters, feeling foolish.

The woman’s smile fades a little for a moment, but she quickly resumes grinning. “I was joking . . . Oh, well, no wonder, I guess you’ve been busy since that business with Jenny and all the rest! I’m Martha. Remember? Small issue with the end of the universe and all that?”

Though she shifts through her memories, Donna still has no idea who this Martha is. And who’s Jenny? Wait, _the end of the universe?_ She can’t concentrate. She’s got a terrible headache coming on; she recognises the symptoms of dizziness and the heat, the incredible fire in her head. “No, I’m sorry. Memory like a goldfish, you know.” Donna laughs uncomfortably. 

Martha rolls her eyes, though not unkindly. “Come on, you said he’d told you all about me! We got on well enough, right? Or were you just being kind?”

“Who . . . ?” 

Martha leans forward, rocking a little on the chair. “The Doctor! Who else? Don’t play coy with me, I used to travel with him too. Come on, you know that!”

God, she’s so confused. Who on earth is this Doctor? The pain behind her eyes is getting worse. She feels a burning in her skull and her ears are ringing. _I want to go home._ “Look, I’m sorry, I think this is a case of mistaken identity. I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Martha’s frowning now. “Donna, I’d know you anywhere. I mean, sure we only knew each other a short while, but it’s not like you can forget the Doctor, Donna!”

With a gasp of pain, Donna falls. 

She sees it. All of it. The things from her dreams, the ones she can’t remember in the morning. Flying and running, so much running . . . It’s like her mind is on fire, it hurts so much; it’s raging and burning and she can _see_ . . . 

And just as quickly as she remembers, just when she feels the pain can’t get any worse, she forgets. The dull ache she feels is worse than the flames her mind conjured. She is empty.

Several patrons stand to help her, but Donna mumbles and pushes them away. With Martha’s help she resumes her place at the table. She ignores the café staff asking if she wants an ambulance, brushing them off sharply, and swallows a couple of painkillers from her purse.

She’s had these funny spells before, usually when she zoned, but never with pain like this. Never with the burning and the blankness. Those words were the trigger. _Doctor, Donna._ Another sharp pain shoots through her skull.

“Donna? Donna, I’m so sorry, are you OK? I can help, I’m a doctor -” Martha’s concerned voice interrupts her thoughts.

“No!” Donna can’t stop herself from crying out as Martha says it again, _Doctor_. There’s a moment of silence whilst Martha stares at her, wide-eyed.

“I’m fine,” Donna mutters. “Just get these funny spells, you know? I can deal with it.”

“Are you sure? Donna – Donna, can’t you remember him? He wouldn’t leave you like this!” Martha’s face is angry now.

“Stop saying that!” 

“Saying – wait, do you mean Doc-”

“Yes! Please. Please, it hurts my head.” Donna lowers her face, in pain, embarrassed; because she knows she sounds mad. She takes a deep breath.

“Listen – Martha, was it?” Martha nods. “Listen, I don’t know who you are, but you seem to know me. You keep talking about things. Things I feel like I know, but I don’t. The only ‘doctor’ I know is the one who checks on me when I’m sick.”

Martha sits back and looks hard at Donna. There’s a long silence, interrupted only by the sounds of coffee machines and soft conversations around them. 

“Martha.” There’s a pleading tone in Donna’s voice now. “Please tell me. Tell me why, when I look at you – I know you. Why I have these headaches all the time now. Why it is when you said those words I knew them, and I remembered . . . something. Tell me why I can’t remember my dreams now, all I can think of is this terrible blaze in my head, every morning. Tell me why you know who I am. Tell me . . . Just tell me who I am.”

Martha’s quiet a moment. “Donna Noble, I don’t know why the Doctor let you forget. I don’t know you very well at all, really . . .”

Donna bites her lip as a lump rises to her throat. She’d tried denying it. She’d tried pretending nothing was wrong with her, but there is, and this woman knows more than Donna did, and she’s not _telling her!_ Her anger must be evident on her face, because Martha takes her hand.

“Donna, don’t be angry. Don’t hate me, please, I couldn’t stand that. If the Doc- if he let you forget him, and me, and everything else, I can’t betray that. I have to respect that. He must have done it for a good reason. Donna, I wish I could tell you it all. But I can’t.”

Martha slips her hand out from Donna’s grip, and stands and prepares to leave. “No, don’t! Please don’t! I can’t do it, I can’t keep wondering!” Donna says in a strained voice, tears filling her eyes.

Martha pauses, and then bends down and kisses Donna on the forehead – just like he might have done. 

“Donna, trust me. Trust yourself. There is a reason you can’t remember. I don’t want to hurt you. Look at yourself! You’re in pain when I speak, you collapsed! I won’t hurt you, I will protect you like he tried to! I’m sorry, Donna . . . I’m so sorry.” The pain blooms in Donna’s head again. Martha turns on her heel and leaves through the door. She looks back only once. Donna doesn’t try to stop her.

It’s true. Donna’s headache melts away as soon as Martha’s gone. The heat in her head cools and she’s left, sitting at the café table, crying her eyes out, wondering what she could have been – who she might have been, once . . . Why had she forgotten? 

Her husband, her wonderful Shaun, and Grandad find her like that hours later, when she finally picks up her phone and asks them in a strangled voice to take her home. 

Wilf won’t get it out of her, what happened. When she finally speaks, all she says is that she can’t remember. She’s forgotten something. And then Wilf cries with her, and Shaun holds her, even though he doesn’t understand.

Home. She belongs here. She needs to dream of things she cannot imagine, and forget in the chilly mornings. And one day, she might remember a man, a skinny man with stupid hair and the greatest man she’s ever known. 

~

Martha goes home, sits down at the kitchen table, and doesn’t speak for what feels like a very long time. 

Eventually, roused by the curiosity and the frustration – no, the anger – she makes a phone call. A strange man answers, a man she sometimes believes to be a dream, claiming to be real. It takes him quite sometime to convince her he’s the man she’s looking for, but he does, and she believes him. No one else is ever quite like him. And there’s no mistaking the screech of the TARDIS in the background.

She asks him why. After she tells him what happened, he tells her everything. He tells her with tears in his throat and sorrow, so much sorrow, making his voice like lead. There’s silence. She says good bye, feeling for all the world as if she might not forgive him – but knowing that she does, she always will, and he hangs up. She sits at the table and cries.

She wants this life. She wants her crazy, dangerous life. She wouldn’t have her old one back for anything. Martha knows though, that never knowing is bliss for some. She wants Donna to be happy, wants her to live a normal, safe, happy life. To forget the pain and suppress that part of her mind that saw more than any other human being on the Earth.

She stands, dries her eyes and walks away. Across the city, so does a fierce redhead flanked by an old man and a tall man, both of whom she loves. And across the universe, another redhead, as proud and as fierce as Donna herself, tries to figure out what on Earth is troubling her cheerful, wacky Doctor.

~

She has lived a good life. Her children and her grandchildren come to visit her often, and she finds herself imitating her own grandfather, pointing out the stars to them at night, whispering their names and telling them that one day they’ll be able to go to the moon as simple as going to the shop. Her husband has passed on, two years ago, peacefully, in his sleep. Donna thinks it is strange. She doesn’t know why she expects those deaths around her to be sudden, unexplained, to be filled with adrenalin and running. It’s as if something long ago conditioned her for it. But that doesn’t make sense of course – Donna has lived a peaceful life, and the deaths in it have been just as quiet. 

Wilf’s death had come slowly, knowingly, and it hurt Donna, but she was prepared for it, and Wilf had known it was coming. She was there as he said his last words – sadly, she doesn’t know to this day, what he meant, but she knows he was at peace. She remembers.

A hospital bed. That bloody disinfectant smell. A case of pneumonia, slowly festering within him, but _it’s ok Donna, I’m ready now, it’s my time, my sweet._

“Grandad – please. I’m not ready. I don’t want you to go.” (Pain, fire, in her head, but no, she knows how to handle it now – push it away.)

“’S ok love. I’m all right. You’ve got Shaun now, and the little one, eh? You don’t need to worry about your old gramps any more.” (Sylvia, on the other side of the bed, crying quietly, holding his other hand. He faces her, with difficulty, his lungs are rasping, he doesn’t have the energy.)

“Sylvia.”

“Yes, Dad? You can tell me.”

“Make him come back for her.”

“Dad?”

“You know Sylvia. When she’s ready. She needs to remember.” Donna’s blood runs cold. The café . . . He said – but no, she wasn’t allowed to remember, to know.

(That tiny, hardly visible glimpse at her face, then, Sylvia looks back at him, as if it never happened at all.)

“Yes, Dad. I know.”

“Good . . . I love you both. My girls. I’m so proud of you.”

(The rest of that day, hours of silence, his breathing, the clock. The night, leaving him to sleep. He would not wake.)

But that is years in the past, and Sylvia too is gone. Donna is left without them. Of course it hurts. Of course it isn’t easy. But Donna has had her own family now. 

She snorts to herself at the thought that she is a matriarch, but she’s a tiny bit chuffed too. It’s nice to feel important.

She knows her time is coming. Maybe she should be scared. She wants to accept it, to go as quietly and easily as her husband, her grandfather and her mother, but there is something holding her back.

Donna doesn’t know what she’s waiting for, but she will keep waiting. She won’t give up the fight. Long ago she accepted that there were things she could never know about herself. But now, that longing to know is back, and her migraines and dreams plague her, send her mad because she needs to know, she must, before she dies. She’s waited for so long. She will keep waiting.

It is night and Donna doesn’t want to sleep. She craves the dreaming but the waking is too painful. So she braids her hair that has long since turned white, and sits up in bed, and thinks. The house is so quiet without Shaun and of course, the kids have long since moved out. The eldest offered to help out – but Donna would not have that, she would take care of herself _thank you very much._

She immediately regrets that decision moments later, when she hears the chair in the kitchen topple over. 

Donna does not take a home invasion lying down, and she quickly gets up and retrieves the bat she has hidden away beneath her bed. Well, she does this as quickly as she is able – which is not very, considering how frail she has become over the past few months. 

Slowly – Donna tells herself she is intentionally slow; wouldn’t do to rush into things and fall – she creeps around the corner, her grip on the bat shaky and unsure, but her eyes determined. There are sounds coming from the kitchen, and then a muttered “Oops – must get myself one of those.” 

_Well, you’re not getting one from me, mate,_ Donna thinks, rounding the corner and mustering up all her strength to swing the bat behind her head, yelling out to scare the intruder.

There’s a girlish scream that’s certainly not hers, and a lot of flapping hands in her face, and Donna curses as she drops the bat. Frozen in place, she can only watch in confusion as a gangly man with floppy hair scrambles to pick himself up from the ground, but he grins when he sees her face.

“Donna Noble! I should have known, of course you’d never let me in unknown, Donna Noble! You’re brilliant, Donna, you are. Almost missed you, really,” he says, and then he brings her in for a gentle hug.

She’s not sure what to think, and has, for once, been struck dumb.

“Nothing to say to an old friend, then? I didn’t think so, I guess I just hoped . . .” His face seems a little sad, and old, for someone who actually looks quite young.

“I’ve got no bloody idea who you are,” says Donna, finding her voice at last, “But what in god’s name do you think you’re doing in my kitchen?!”

“Oh Donna, Donna, I’m a friend, I swear. I made a promise to your grandad. I’ve come to fulfil it,” says the stranger, and some part of Donna stills. There’s a brief moment of silence while she looks into his eyes, unfamiliar as they are.

“Well then,” she says, “You’d better sit down.”

So they sit, awkwardly, across from one another and eyeing one another up with the kitchen table between them.

“Well,” he says, shifting nervously, like a child. “I would introduce myself, but if you’ll give me a moment, I can show you. But it’ll also kill you.”

Donna’s mouth drops open. “Blimey mate, but that’s a lot to land on an old woman.”

“Erm, yeah, probably should have broken that to you better, but, you know. Not always had the gift for that.”

Silence falls again, and Donna considers. “So, I take it you’re the explanation for all the weird things that happen to me? The memory problems, the strangers hugging me, the whole burning brain thing?”

“Yes and no, see, that was another version of me, and it technically wasn’t my fault, and I swore I’d put it right again one day, but the problem is that putting it right would also kill you. And I . . . Well, you know your body better than me, but I monitored. You’re dying, Donna.”

She knew. But she’d never admitted it out loud before. “Yeah, well. I’ve lived a good life," she says past the lump in her throat.

“I know,” he says quietly. “My Donna. You lived a good life without me.”

He reaches for her hand, and to her surprise, she finds herself giving it.

“It’s your choice,” he says. “It will kill you. But you’ll know.”

And how can she refuse the truth, after all these years?

One whispered _yes_ , and he is by her side. She looks into his eyes, and still, there is no comprehension. But as he takes her head in his hands and brings his forehead to hers, her head begins to burn in that familiar way. She knows this man.

His mind touches hers like spilled water, cool, soothing the fire inside. It is intensely felt relief, but relief nonetheless. And slowly, images and sounds and smells flicker into being.

She was young. A skinny strip of a man, running ahead of her, turning back momentarily to grin at her – and somehow she knows this man is the same one as the man that sits before her now, though they have different faces. She sees his face again, dark and full of grief, hears her pleas. _Please, just save someone._ She sees strange creatures with brains held in their palms, hears them singing for her. _Martha,_ the woman she’d met all those years ago, and now she recognises her, a friend. A gigantic wasp and – Agatha Christie herself, waving her off, away from the TARDIS. The sound of gears and a _vworp, vworp_ that’s so familiar. A library. Full of terror. The pity in the other woman’s eyes, _she knew what would happen to me._ A blonde woman, begging her to turn left. A group of friends, piloting a ship, and knowledge – too much knowledge, filling her head, but _I am good._

Fire. Brief, burning, explosive. And then nothing.

~

He carries her upstairs himself. When he tucks her into bed, the peaceful smile on her face tells him he made the right choice.

“Donna Noble, you were magnificent,” he whispers. He leans down to kiss her forehead, and walks away, back to the people that need him now. And Donna sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> First fic I ever wrote. Fixed it up a little, finished it.


End file.
